Sue
There are several reasons why you cannot find them, some arising from them, some from the online rolls. you have already covered them being just outside and age differences, but:
1. Although you were/are atill supposed to register, not everyone could be bothered, and indeed some might prefer for their residence not to be known, either for "legal" reasons. or because they didn't like authority knowing too much.
2. this reason applies to all pdf record searching.The search facility on the online rolls relies on character recognition . That is, the scans are analysed by a computer , which assigns an electronic text to it. Sometimes the lettering is unclear, particulalrly where the original book is creased, dirty etc. Also there are sometimes glitches where it reads part of another entry in with the one you want,. In these cases , when it does a search it fails to pick up what you want because it has electronically recorded it slightly (or possibly very) incorrectly.
3. The name of the street as inputted by the scanner can vary , and this can upset the search. For example St Lukes Road in some yaers can be found under St Luke's Road, and some years under Lukes road, and , if I remember correctly one year it is St Lukes
4. I have found that in some cases the online records are incomplete. presumably because a page or so was miseed when the original was scanned.. I have found this several times, where , if you search by street, a whole batch is missing (say 40-60 , or for non-consecutive numbering 40,42,43,46......to 68,70,72)
There is nothing you can do in case 1.
In case 2 if someone I definitely think is there cannot be found, then I search the whole street for that year in the hope that there has been an error, and i can find them
In case three - you can try several versions if there are any
in case 4 all you can do is check (by looking at whole street ) if any parts are missing and, if youare lucky enough to live near a Birmingham library, go in and check the relevent hard copy
Sorry if none of these points are very helpful, but those are the only suggestions i can think of at present
mike
